Mass Effect: Research and Delivery
by Fortlowe
Summary: On Omega, life is cheap and secrets are costly. When an arms and armor technician and part-time smuggler is visited by a ghost from his past, he'll be asked to trade one for the other. But will he chose to keep his life or his secrets?
1. Chapter 1

_**Mass Effect: Research and Delivery**_

Prologue

"What now, Ezekiel?" His voice was as dry as a tomb. _I think I've grown soft, _I thought. Years before that, I'd done terrible things to worse people and earned my reputation as a murderous cold blooded bastard. _Terrorizing terrorists_. That was our mission. Make sure the bastards responsible for the Blitz understood just how frightening a place being an enemy of humanity really was. I executed my mission and earned my reputation, even if I wasn't proud of either. And there I was, a former elite soldier sitting on a river bank of perhaps the most beautiful and forbidden world in the galaxy, over watched by one of the deadliest beings I had ever known, and I was shaken to the core.

"Ezekiel?" Again, the question. As focused as a bullet in flight. Rae Arimas was a patient man. Remarkable for so many of his 'talents' his patience is always the attribute that made me most afraid of him. After all, he was a Salarian, and patience amongst his people was an exceedingly rare trait. I remembered when I stood vigil with him for two days waiting for the perfect shot. He was wrapping up his stint with the STG and requested that I be assigned as his over watch. He had been on loan to my unit during the 'mop up' operation after the Blitz, so the Alliance was eager to square their debt to the STG. I still don't know what why the STG decided that man had to die. But for two days we waited on top of that sand dune observing the settlement outpost. And for two days he didn't speak one word. Then the man we were looking for finally isolated himself outside of a prefab. He was smoking a cigarette. Pop! Pop! Pop! Three suppressed rounds released with no discernable pause between them. Still, Rae managed to put two in the targets heart and one square between his eyes. The target was a member of my old unit. Then, after the deed was done all he said was _Okay_.

On detecting just the undercurrent of impatience in his voice now, I ascended out of my stupor. "How old do you think she was?"

"Older than me." he said to me before deeply sighing, "Younger than you. Relative to your people, she is…_was_ about eleven or twelve." The small blue body washed up on the shore was bloody and broken and drowned. There were old bruises all over her body. She'd lived a life of terrible pain before she finally met her end in that river.

"We're burying her, that's what now."

"That is not the custom of her people, Ezekiel."

"We're the only people she has left, Rae." I said defeated. _The only people she ever had. And we were too late to protect her. _"We're going to bury her and then we're going to bury them. _All of them_." A hand came to rest on my shoulder. There was a coldness like the black of space emanating from that hand. A coldness I needed, right then.

_ Okay_ was all he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One:

"Rawton! Rawton! I know you can hear me Rawton! Open up!" Charik was fat, loud, and delusional. The fact that he was Batarian had almost no bearing on why I couldn't stand the sight of him. I didn't know any Batarians that liked him either. He'd been assaulting my hangover and my front door for at least five minutes. I hadn't looked up from my work the entire time.

"I don't open for another hour Charik. Read the damned sign." I said into the intercom. He must have managed to get under my skin, because I was pointing at the front door, even though Charik couldn't see me. I was tinkering on a set of advanced prototype armor I'd gotten as payment for tracking down some schematics for an office building on Bekenstien for a little Japanese girl.

"My armor doesn't fit anymore you conniving bastard! I demand a refund!" he shouted into the intercom while still banging on the door. Fat, loud, and delusional. And obviously not taking the hint. I told the dumb bastard that the measurements he had given me didn't jibe. I offered to alter it later if my suggestion didn't pan out. He had some of his henchmen with him though so he wasn't about to defer to the judgment of a lowly human. _Make the repairs and alterations as I've ordered human_ is what he said. Against my better judgment, I did just that, thinking that I would teach the fat lout a lesson. So there he was, banging on my front door and irritating my already unbearable hangover, all because his fat ass couldn't fit into his armor. My head felt like someone was boring holes in it.

"DAMN IT HUMAN! OPEN THIS DOOR!" still banging. That'll teach me about _lessons_.

"Stop that damn racket, Charik!" I shouted, rubbing my temples. "You're not getting a refund! Your getting a damned alteration! And your not getting that until my store opens in one hour! And if you keep this up, I'll charge you for the alteration! Now get the hell away from my store!"

"This isn't the end of this Zeke Rawton! I'll be back human!" he shouted and gave my door one final wrap before he stormed off in a huff. Damned Fool.

Except for the front door, I kept my store front in pristine condition. I'd installed state of the art security measures in and around my store. Heartbeat tracking smart guns on all four of the exterior _and _interior corners. Some variable frequency kinetic shielding jammers. My latest addition were a pair of arc projectors overlooking the storefront from recessed hides. But, I will never replace that door. Pocked with bullet holes, patched with ceramic, and scarred with burns from the Hanar equivalent of Molotov cocktails, that gnarly old door was a message to anyone that got in their heads the fool notion of robbing my store. _You're welcome to try_.

_ D.H. _were the initials I'd scratched off of the inside collar of the armor. _Hell_, was thinking,_ if this armor was really being developed for the bastard I thought it was, Ms. Koto was getting a discount the next time we did business._ Regardless of its origin, the armor was cutting edge. Powered armor was hard to come by, and that set not only had a strength enhancing algorithm, but it maximized the efficiency of sprinting, too. It had some kind of new power source that suped up the shielding almost ten percent beyond norm. I moved some components out of the torso and into the helmet then added a secondary power source that bumped up the kinetic shielding another five percent, while still making room for more ammo. Wouldn't be able to remove the helmet without disabling the shields, but who took off their helmet in a firefight those days anyway?

My door chimed again. I'd had enough of Charick for one morning. I was reaching to mute the intercom when her voice come through.

"Easy, I can't stay and talk. I'm in trouble. I need your help. Meet me at Jon's after you close up today and I'll try to explain..." There was a pause, but I could tell the mic was still live. It was all I could do not to shout into the intercom for her to wait. "I miss you Easy. I...I'm sorry."

Then the intercom went dead and she was gone. I wanted to go after her right then. To tell her I forgive her. To ask her to forgive me. To tell her I would change and that we could go somewhere and leave our pasts behind us. Be the people we always wanted to be. Instead I soldered the last component of the armor in place, closed it up, and poured three fingers of brandy.

It had been a profitable, if slow, workday in the shop. Bevon, the Elcor owner of a major distillery here on Omega, was planning a trip to the home world. For Elcor like himself, that have acclimatized to standard gravity, going home was more than a notion. Without powered armor to support them, they could be crushed. Standing up on the home world without aid was a source of great pride amongst Elcor off worlders, though. Some off world Elcor constantly wore weighted harnesses to compensate for the reduced gravity. When they returned home, they still needed assistance breathing, but they could walk. Most didn't wear the harnesses, though.

Bevon wanted a special set of armor meant for physical therapy not protection. The concept was to use the kinetic barriers to cause continuous and uniform resistance over his whole body. An algorithm would increase the resistance over time until it was equal to that of the gravity of his home world. If it worked, he'd be able to walk around on his world with no assistance whatsoever. Rigs like the one I'd made customer for Bevon were available in Citadel space, but even there they were hard to come by. Out here in the Terminus, they were downright impossible to acquire. He'd been planning this trip home for more than a year, he told me, and he had another six weeks before he was scheduled to leave. I was happy to help him go home, and not only due to the hefty sum of credits he was paying me. The creds made the hard part of that project a little easier, though. Designing, building, and fitting the armor then making the weekly adjustments to the rig was the easy part. Listening to a homesick Elcor for six hours straight was the _real _job.

By the time we were finished for they day, I knew all there was to know about Elcor distilling techniques and a lot more than I _ever _wanted to know about Bevon's sex life. That day though, Bevon's monotone was a welcome distraction to my overriding thoughts. I was barely able to keep my mind from wandering back to Kendra. _Kendra Blake-Rawton_. She had never dropped my name, even though we were two years divorced, by then. I'd done my best to keep tabs on her without involving myself in her life. She wanted to move on, and heaven knew I'd given her more than enough reasons to do just that. She had come back to me though. And she needed me. I closed up an hour early and took the back way out. I'm pretty sure I saw Charik and a couple of his flunky's marching in the direction of my store as my cab lifted off.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Two

Jopke's was a dark, smoky, dive bar on Omega that was older than the British Empire. The name and ownership of that bar had changed maybe a handful of times over the centuries, but the way I hear it, the crowd had always been the same. On a space station brimming with every kind of murderer, Jopke's was where the killers all the other killers were afraid of could come and have a quiet drink in peace and privacy. Rumor was, everything from the assassination of presidents to the near genocide of an entire species were premeditated in the shadowy depths of some of the booths in Jopke's.

Jopke, the current owner of the most dangerous piece of real estate in the galaxy, was a Krogan former pit fighter. I had never seen him in action, but I'd known enough from our first meeting to see how he could keep the peace in that dive. Rae brought me to Jopke's for a meet and greet with an Eclipse mercenary we planned to milk for info then neutralize. Jopke's was wiping glasses behind the bar when we came in. I was in awe of Rae back then, and still was, but less so and more afraid. I'd seen him kill all kinds. Krogans. Biotics. Krogan Biotics. Hell, I watched him kill something called a Yargh, hand to hand. So when the relatively small Krogan bartender waved us over the last thing I would have imagined took place.

"_Rae." Jopke said to Rae, still wiping. His voice was rumbled like the sound of crushed glass._

"_Jopke." Rae replied. "This is Ezekiel Rawton. We are here to arrange for a contract."_

"_Mmm hmmm." Jopke said putting the glass down on the bar. "I need her alive for another seventy two hours." _

"_That is not possible. We have other matters to attend to beyond this one."_

"_Make it possible." Jopke said throwing the towel over his shoulder. It was only barely perceptible, but I thought I saw Rae's eyes narrow. I took a quick glance around the bar, because I was sure we were about to kill someone. Our Asari contact was sitting alone nursing an empty glass in a booth with orange upolstry. She looked around furtively, like she knew she was in beyond her depth. A Batarion and a Turian were glowering at each other across a pool table. If the Krogan was going down, then everyone was expendable. Fifty-fifty on whether we could extract the Asari and the info she possessed or if she'd have to be put down, too. _

"_Of course, Jopke." Rae said then. I blinked, bewildered. Rae was the most dangerous living thing in the galaxy as far as I was concerned and I had just witnessed what I never thought I would. Someone Rae was afraid of. _

"_I know I don't have to say this to you, Rae, but try to make it quick. I knew her father." He said putting another glass on the bar. He poured two fingers of a blue substance into each glass. "Here, human, drink this with her. It'll help you and the Asari relax." _

"Zeke."

"Jopke." I said. Jopke already had a glass filled with two fingers of Serrice Ice parked in from of my stool at the bar.

"Bad news, I take it." I said after a sip of the brandy.

"Not for me. You should stay clear of this one, Zeke."

"I'm not into anything yet, Jopke. I'm just here to talk is all."

"Mmmm Hmmm. How long has it been since you've killed someone, Zeke. Five? Ten years?

"Not, nearly long enough." I said, then downed the rest of my drink.

"Mmmm Hmmm."

"Where is she?" He slid an envelope in front of my glass by way of answering.

"She left that about four hours ago." Pouring another couple of fingers of brandy into my glass. "Didn't say where she came from or where she was going.

I opened the envelop and turned it up. Out of the envelope onto the countertop spilled an OSD, a credit chit, and a data pad. "She wasn't wearing armor, but she was carrying. It didn't look like she'd slept in a while, Zeke."

I picked up the data pad first. When I powered it on, a still of her face appeared onscreen. Drop dead gorgeous, was not only an old saying when describing Kendra Blake-Rawton. More than a few men have died looking into those deep brown eyes. Even on that screen, a thrill of fear shivered up my spine looking into those eyes, again. I was long past fearing what they saw or what was behind them. Those were the fears of young fools willing to kill or die to find out what those eyes saw and had seen. I was an _old _fool, and my fear was a simpler thing. I was afraid of what I would do just to look into those eyes one last time.

"Anything else, Zeke?"

"What?" I asked, shaken from my stupor.

"I gotta get the place ready for the evening crowd. Do you need anything else before you go?" Jopke asked.

"Oh! Naw, Jopke." I said pocketing the OSD and credit chit then standing up. "I think I'm good for now."

"Look, kid, you done me a favor or two over the years, so I'm going to do you one now: This woman's troubles ain't your making and won't be undone by your doin'. It won't end well if you get too mixed up in it. Probably won't end well if you don't, either. Her mother's here on Omega now. Helena don't have the same pull she used to, but nobody's forgotten what she's capable of. If Kendra wants out of this mess, Helena is where she will go. She's only coming to you to dig in deeper and that means you'll go down with her. "

"Hell, Jopke, you know better than I do that we _all _go down eventually. Might as well go down swinging." I said waving as I walked through the door.


End file.
